As Sarah Lyall reports in The New York Times, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis, and American writer Joyce Carol Oates were thought to be frontrunners for this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, which usually means they aren’t going to win. British playwright Harold Pinter, who says he has written his last play and will focus on his “overtly political” writing, won this year’s award, and he was as surprised as anyone. “‘I was called 20 minutes before the official announcement,’ he said in his e-mail message. ‘The chair of the Nobel committee phoned and said, ‘You have been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.’ I remained silent and then said, ‘I’m speechless.’”
But that’s better than being rendered lifeless by a TV network. Lyall reports that there was some confusion Thursday at one British news network: “There was a moment of exquisite discomfort on television on Thursday afternoon after the Nobel announcement was made, The Evening Standard reported. ‘A Sky News presenter announced at 12:01 p.m. that Harold Pinter had died,’ the paper said, ‘before correcting herself, after a Pinteresque pause, and saying that he had in fact won a Nobel Prize.’”
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